1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the present disclosure relate generally to wireless devices, and more specifically to facilitating communication between resource-constrained devices and wireless communication terminals.
2. Related Art
Resource-constrained devices are a class of embedded devices. As is well known in the relevant arts, embedded devices may operate with minimal processing and/or memory capabilities to the point they generally have minimal user interfaces (e.g., LEDs and switches, but not support for much bigger displays such as monitors or graphical user interfaces). Resource constrained devices are characterized as a subset of such embedded devices, while have small memory and limited processing power such that complex software applications cannot be implemented within such devices. Resource-constrained devices find use in machines such as refrigerators, automobiles, lighting systems, printers, control networks, sensor networks, etc.
Wireless communication terminals refer to devices such as mobiles phones, lap-top computers, and personal digital assistants (PDA), which support wireless communication according to protocols such as Wifi™/802.11, Blue Tooth™ or cellular protocols. Wireless communication terminals are provided with sufficient processing and/or memory capabilities to support applications which can use wireless protocols and standard internet protocols to communicate with other devices on a network (e.g., the world-wide web using protocols such as HTTP). Wireless communication terminals are also able to communicate using standard data interchange formats such as XML and JSON (JavaScript Object Notation).
There is often a need to facilitate communication between resource-constrained devices and wireless communication terminals. In one prior approach, additional capabilities are sought to be integrated into resource-constrained devices such that each resource-constrained device can communicate directly over a wireless medium with a wireless communication terminal. Unfortunately, not all resource-constrained devices may need such a capability to communicate wirelessly and the corresponding overhead may be unacceptable for manufacturers of some resource-constrained devices.
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